


Something Like Antipathy

by nisakomi



Category: K-pop, Super Junior, Super Junior-M
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2018-05-04 23:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5352887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even those flowers beneath your feet don’t hesitate to live.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Like Antipathy

**Author's Note:**

> written for kpopolymfics prompt epik high - don't hate me

Zhou Mi wakes up and his life stretches in front of him; the world is waiting for him to hold it in his hand.

He takes it in his arms, cradles it, and tries not to cry when it turns on him.

*

Guangzhou is different from Wuhan.

Wuhan is familiarity. It’s a city with a dialect familiar to his ears but unfamiliar to his tongue, a steady rhythm pulsating beneath his fingertips, where he’ll never get lost no matter how much construction goes on. Wuhan is a young child looking out at the Yangtze River from their condo in Wuchang, watching the water become a little cleaner, a little clearer year after year. Wuhan is entering singing competitions for fun, because his mother is encouraging, and doing a little better with a higher ranking year after year. These are moments he remembers, eating his mother’s cooking or the hot dry noodles from stalls in the morning, and if he closes his eyes he can still taste it all on his tongue.

_Guangzhou is —_

Guangzhou is hot and polluted. Guangzhou is a sticky heat you can’t pull away from no matter how many times you take a cold shower or wipe your sweat with a towel or change your outfit. Guangzhou is university at the Zhuhai campus, reaching for his goals, courses required for a broadcasting major. Guangzhou is a plate of the plumpest dumplings; offering him huge shopping centers, busy streets, beckoning him towards the best days of his youth. Guangzhou is happiness because there are no memories except good ones.

Guangzhou is his debtor. He owes Guangzhou everything because this is where his relationship with SME began.

This is where his story began.

This is where this story begins.

This isn’t about a young man who joins a corporation and climbs its ranks, living blandly but happily. This is about a dream, and the relationships that make and break your heart. SME is the choice, but its consequences aren’t something that you can imagine when the phone in your apartment rings and you look out to see elementary students playing basketball, feeling the bounce of the ball match your heartbeat. At that moment in time, all you can think is _this is it, this is everything I’ve ever wanted_.

Everything he’s ever wanted comes with a price. But Zhou Mi’s not one to run from consequences. And he still believes that the price he has to pay will be worth it. If he could change anything, he wouldn’t change a thing.

*

As soon as he’s finished the call with the SM representative, he drops everything in favour of looking for his address book. He flips through the pages, scanning quickly before grabbing clumsily for his phone. His fingers fumble as he presses the keys on the number pad and they continue to fidget throughout the sound of the dial tone.

“Hello?”

“Hello? This is Zhou Mi,” he tries in stilted Korean.

“Excuse me? Who is this?”

He returns to Mandarin, familiar on his tongue. “I can’t believe you sent them a recording of me through the ‘Recommend a Friend’ option. After this stunt, I’m never calling you my friend again!”

“Zhou Mi? What? Is this about the clip I sent SM?”

“Yes, of course, silly.”

“How did you find out? Wait, did you get –”

“Ki Hoon, I won the grand prize! I’m going to do it, I’m going to move to Seoul.”

Zhou Mi almost misses the congratulations he's given as he whoops with glee, internalizing what's really happening for the first time.

“But what are you going to do about school?”

“I’ll have to drop it, I guess.”

“Say, Zhou Mi, can you take back what you said?”

“What?”

“About us not being friends. I need to tell everyone we’re close after you become a member of the Chinese TVXQ.”

“Kim Ki Hoon!”

*

Leaving college is not actually that easy. He doesn’t know how to tell his family that he’s giving up his entire life of stability to chase the one dream he’s had since he was an infant. He also doesn’t know how to tell his friends that he’s off to become a celebrity in South Korea.

He doesn't know but somehow he still comes up with exactly eight ways to explain to his mother and another six ways to explain to his friends. Each is perfectly logical and well reasoned, and he spends several days preparing the words he'll say in advance. When he ends up talking to them, every one of the rehearsed speeches flies out of his head and it doesn’t matter because they’re completely supportive.

This is the beginning of the end.

Zhou Mi is used to being supported through every step of his life, used to being accepted and having his hand held, used to being loved and needed and wanted. It’s being accustomed to being well cared for that makes living without people who care about him so hard to swallow.

*

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

*

He arrives in Seoul with his arms spread wide, heart ready and open to new possibilities. What he embraces is a city covered in spikes and what he bleeds is something like his soul.

*

 _Everyone, this is Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi, this is Super Junior_.

Whenever the others tell stories about how they met, Zhou Mi smiles and nods along. The truth is, he has very little recollection of the time he was introduced to Super Junior. He remembers there were a lot of them, he remembers forgetting all of the things he had researched about them, he remembers shaking hands and smiling a lot. He smiles a lot anyway, that part of the memory isn’t very telling. There isn’t anything about that time that stands out to him, blurring together into a bundle of frayed nerves and anxious excitement. To meet thirteen of the hottest stars in the country is a little overwhelming, after all.

He does, however, remember individual meetings.

*

There’s the time he talked to Han Geng for the first time, after he came out of the bathroom stall in the main SM building and found him there washing his hands. Zhou Mi had smiled and bowed his head and introduced himself and Han Geng had given him a smile so tender and full of fondness that Zhou Mi almost felt like they had known each other for years.

“You’re the new member right, the one from Wuhan? Good enough to be a singer without any training?” His voice was teasing and gentle.

To this day, Zhou Mi still remembers the softness of Han Geng’s voice. That day, and in all his songs and definitely on an every day basis, Han Geng's speech was always quiet and calm, the kind of voice that could lull you to sleep, or sing you a lullaby, and automatically make you feel at peace even when you were at your most agitated. It was filled with a kind of warmth that was hard to fake, which is why Zhou Mi suspected that everyone loved him so much. And he genuinely believes that people will continue to fall in love with Geng because he’s such a charming person. This first impression is markedly unchanged for the entire time that Zhou Mi gets to know him, and ultimately leads him to believe that he understands why Han Geng ended up leaving.

You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but Zhou Mi had completely read the first chapter when he realized exactly the kind of novella Geng was always meant to be.

*

The memory of meeting Kim Heechul is a little bit hazier, somewhat mixed up with things that he must have imagined. He distinctly remembers Heechul’s gaze on him, peering over his laptop to judge Zhou Mi openly, without any trace of subtlety. Heechul did not pretend to like you if he didn’t like you.

The first thing Zhou Mi noticed about Heechul was his hair. Then it was his fingers. And the last thing he thought before he was pushed down onto a chair and studied with calculating detail, was that Heechul was someone that you definitely wanted to be your friend.

He’s not sure if he did anything at all, or said anything that led Heechul to like him. All he remembers is blinking as he looked up and smiling, even though he wasn’t quite sure what was going on. He remembers letting himself be evaluated, from the leather loafers he was wearing, to the skinny jeans and denim jacket, all the way to the top of his head.

“Seasoning!” Heechul had called him, and at the time Zhou Mi didn’t really understand what he meant. As the years went on, the pet name stuck for intimate moments, and Zhou Mi was welcomed into his group of favourites. As if Heechul was running a gang right under SM’s noses. (He was.)

*

The first memory Zhou Mi has of Cho Kyuhyun, as with the memories he has of Han Geng and Kim Heechul, is extremely indicative of the relationship they end up forming over the years. Their future is spent together on airplanes, in dormitories, eating together, singing together, dancing together, and looking out at the world staring back at them together.

Of course their meeting would have to do with food. Kyuhyun only really has two loves, and food comes second only to gaming.

It’s past 2pm at a photoshoot for the M members, which is way too late for lunch normally, but considerably early when it comes to idols. They order pork chops with rice and sit together in the back corner of the studio, looking at each other as if examining specimens of another species. The thing is, they could fit together rather well. Kyuhyun has an odd sort of humour and Zhou Mi has an odd sort of affinity for strange and dry jokes. But they can’t talk to each other. Zhou Mi’s Korean is accented and supplemented generously with hand gestures at best. Kyuhyun probably only knows three words of Mandarin, all of them related to food.

Zhou Mi is about to spoon some rice into his mouth when Kyuhyun nudges him with his wrist. Zhou Mi looks up to see him offering the piece of the pork chop he had just cut. Zhou Mi takes the bite and covers his mouth with his hand, bowing his head over and over again. He feeds Kyuhyun some of his own food.

It’s that Monday when he first thinks of Kyuhyun as _cute_.

Later, Zhou Mi won’t tell him that Kyuhyun’s offhand comments are evidence that Kyuhyun does want love and attention, and his rather prickly personality is utterly endearing. Kyuhyun won’t scowl and say something rude and uncalled for before poking Zhou Mi in the nose.

Zhou Mi takes great joy in feeding other people, something he must have picked up from his grandmother. There’s something he finds comforting in watching other people become happy because of food, and that sense of contentment and satisfaction that comes with a full belly has to be more than a cultural thing. It resonates with Zhou Mi that to give someone the kind of happiness which only exists with a good hearty meal is one of the greatest joys someone can gift to another.

Kyuhyun, on his part, is an excellent subject for Zhou Mi’s motherly tendencies. He eats without question, eats quickly, quietly, and efficiently. He consumes entire bags of chips and boxes of cereal without batting his eyelashes, and he’s a growing boy with a healthy appetite, which is exactly the kind of boy that needs food the most.

This is symbiosis.

It’s still symbiosis when Kyuhyun notices that Zhou Mi looks like he should eat twice as much as Kyuhyun does with all the extra height and a great metabolism. So Kyuhyun offers food to him instead, this time, the first time, and together they eat in a way meant only for two.

*

There’s a saying about Greek tragedies and their heroes, and it goes something like; the instant when a person believes they have finally triumphed is the precise moment of their inevitable downfall.

SM Entertainment makes an official announcement about his debut. Super Junior-M. M, for Mandarin, for the language of his motherland, the tongue he is most familiar with and provides him comfort. M also for the Mi in Zhou Mi. For days he’s itching to tell people, and bursting with excitement.

Henry is not nearly as excited as he is.

There’s a realization, deep within him, that he should be paying attention to Henry Lau’s warnings. Something about his violin solo in Don’t Don is a sign - the kind of ominous preceding that evokes painful images of a future. But both of them have a dream, a shared dream, of becoming idols on a stage, performing for other people. And in their hearts they’re hoping for the best even if they fear the worst.

SM reveals Super Junior-M and suddenly, everyone is in an uproar.

*

There are a few demands.

The first is that SM withdraws its proposed Chinese Super Junior unit. The group that has been in the works for months must entirely be scrapped. This is not entirely personal.

The second request is that SM Entertainment promises to never remove or add members from or to Super Junior. This isn’t entirely about Zhou Mi either.

The third is an angry appeal for numerous apologies over the colour of Lee Soo Man’s tie of the day to the concept of Super Junior as a project group, the rain forecasted three weeks from now to the rumour about Super Junior being filled with rejects, “please say sorry for making Super Junior’s Everlasting Friends fan club feel extreme mental and emotional turmoil because of your announcements”, “please apologize for the dirt on the ground and the bugs in the grass and the presence of water on earth”.

Let's not pretend. All of these are about Zhou Mi. And he takes all of these conditions personally.

Zhou Mi, for all his practice time, doesn't notice. Or at least, he tries not to. Kyuhyun reminds him just once, painfully.

“Avoid the front entrance of the SM building for a while,” he says, trying to keep his voice light and collected.

“Why?”

“Well, it’s just that the fans are camping out again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, with their posters and everything, some protest where they use their 0.00000004% of the company as leverage against us or something like that.”

“Is this about me joining Super Junior?”

“Something like that,” Kyuhyun says as a way to end the conversation. But then he notices Zhou Mi’s face, lacking a bright sunshiny smile, and realizes he better continue.

“Look, it happened to me too okay? When they first added me to the group, no one was happy. Not even the rest of Super Junior was welcoming. It was just fans screaming shit at me every time I sang during a performance and sending me threatening SNS messages and shouting angry comments everywhere. Don’t take it personally.”

“ _What_?” Zhou Mi is more distraught than ever, or something like that. He's obviously not taking it personally.

“The Only12 campaign, you must have heard of it right? Some Everlasting Friends right? The name should be shortened to E.F. anyway.”

“E.L.F.? They’re the ones who are asking for my head?”

“Um, not asking for your head per se, but maybe just for your removal?” Kyuhyun immediately wishes he hadn’t said anything at all.

“What will it take to make them stop?”

Kyuhyun looks at Zhou Mi for a moment, and then looks down to the ground.

There’s a pause, a brief moment of pure silence, and then the rush of the waterfall. “I don’t think they really accepted me as part of the group until I had a near death experience.”

Zhou Mi opens his mouth and closes it, opens it again, but there’s nothing to say.

(He has rarely celebrated his birthday. It used to come and go without many people noticing it. He didn’t particularly pay mind to it, and he doesn’t think he’s had a party since he his tenth. For no reason other than custom, birthdays just don’t seem to be a big deal, not in China, anyway. Except among his friends his age, who would give him presents, or cake and take him out drinking. But in the grand scheme of things, it was not a ceremonious occasion.

By the time he’s in Korea, it’s even less of an occasion to celebrate. April 19th means the world to him, the date of Kyuhyun’s accident. Zhou Mi’s birthday after SJM is announced is the one-year anniversary of the accident. Kyuhyun, Junsu, Donghee, and Hyukjae probably don’t remember the date. But Zhou Mi does, perhaps because it coincides with his birthdate, and finds it inappropriate to have festivities. He remembers this conversation vividly for years and still feels guilty when Super Junior celebrates with him years later.

Everything changes when something like death, or separation happens. Everything becomes more real and you stop taking things for granted. This is the only catalyst for change. Zhou Mi is convinced that all he has to do is persuade someone to change for him and he hopes he won’t have to come close to dying for it.)

*

Zhou Mi is miserable for days.

This is understandable for numerous reasons, but not so much for others.

There are probably many things SM should have learned, from U, from Kyuhyun, from Don’t Don, and from Henry things that they don’t ever think about or employ. They will try to smooth things over by having their entire PR department work overtime for a month, and hope things die down. They have learned as much from the past as will guarantee them profits, which is precisely why they are still using dubstep and boxes for the promotional songs of every single one of their groups.

Welcome to SM Entertainment.

Somehow, it still ends up being enjoyable. It’s better than corporate work, and he learns more than he thought was possible about the entertainment industry. People don’t always say things, outright, but he spends a lot of time observing little things. The right angle to tilt your head, how tightly you should hold onto the arm of the person beside you, and just how much vibrato is appropriate for a pop song appealing to teenage girls. For once in his life he’s not the best of his class, and people who are better dancers, better singers, or better actors surround him. Instead of making him nervous, he becomes motivated to do better at any expense. And if he’s tired, he’s tired because he’s singing and dancing and learning how to be a performer. He’s tired doing things he enjoys. There’s no room to complain.

Things happen quickly and before he's even told his mother they're recording for an album, he finds himself rapping in the SJM version of U and lugging giant letters around on the set of Me. It just happens. He becomes so wrapped up in the production that he almost doesn’t have time to think about the fans camped outside, asking for him to leave.

This is SM Entertainment.

What SM ultimately means is that no matter what the fans have been saying or threatening, Zhou Mi will still end up debuting. Or at least, this is the message he infers when they still end up recording Chinese songs with Mandarin lyrics, and film a music video for one of the cheesiest pieces Zhou Mi has ever heard. It works. This is his job. And if people don’t like what he does, then that’s just another aspect of work.

In the bathroom on the third floor, the one beside his favourite recording studio, he stares at his reflection in the mirror and prods at his cheekbones, probes at the bags under his eyes, swollen and ugly. His face is smiling. Smiling used to be his natural response to the world around him, a reaction to the possibilities of life. Now, it’s a defense mechanism. He half expects to wake up one day and find the SM logo plastered across his face, and a copyright logo on his smile. They’ve bought shares into him, invested him, created him, and produced him. He doesn’t belong himself anymore; the fans with 0.01% of the SM stocks own more of Zhou Mi than he himself does.

Zhou Mi is miserable for years.

*

Sometime down the road, Zhou Mi will wonder what kind of gift was bestowed throughout that period of time that allowed him to be so resilient. It was a curse to be alive and conscious of other people’s words.

He finds the message in Kyuhyun’s iPhone while looking through his notes for the lyrics to a Richie Ren song.

 _don’t give up, no matter how painful the future will be, your life will shine brightly_ —

The curse came with a blessing.

*

If you make a mark on paper, you can scratch it out.  
If you make a mark in someone’s heart, it’s etched there forever.

There are moments when Zhou Mi wishes he could disappear just so he doesn’t have to confront the fans. There are moments, even, when he wishes he could just die. These moments are frequent, and loudly punctuated by appraising glances and scathing shouting. He doesn’t look out the window, and doesn’t check anything on the internet, but he still sees the signs.

Hating for the sake of hatred, it always seemed impossible to make a judgment on someone you had never met, and didn’t know. But it’s his existence and the rumours that follow him everywhere he goes, and it doesn’t matter that none of them know whom Zhou Mi is, for as long as they have a target, they’ll hunt and pursue. His chase is premised by a mere shadow and he’s never felt so lacking in control.

The more people say things, the more he believes what they’re saying. Eventually, they have struck him so many times, piercing them with words they use like arrows, and a permanent groove is etched into his heart. He’s almost surprised he hasn’t stopped functioning altogether.

But it's not all bad.

One day, while Zhou Mi is lost at sea and desperately gulping for air, when nothing fills him except salty water and he can’t stop himself from drowning, the waves become too strong and he’s been fighting for so long that he’s exhausted, tired to his bones. It’s too much and suddenly the energy vanishes from his body and he becomes still and lifeless.

When he wakes up, he’s in someone else’s bed, his head is about to split open from the pain of a hangover, and Kyuhyun is curled into the covers beside him, hand firmly wrapped up in and clenching Zhou Mi’s shirt.

It is not an over exaggeration to say that Zhou Mi would have died without Kyuhyun. Kyuhyun, who finds Zhou Mi collapsed in a practice room, who picks him up an takes him back to the dorms. Kyuhyun, Zhou Mi's home.

It happens without either of them noticing it, Kyuhyun because he’s actively trying not to acknowledge that he genuinely cares about other people, and Zhou Mi because he’s too busy trying not to acknowledge the existence of his own misery.

It (whatever it is) also has a rickety start. The language barrier leads to miscommunication and Kyuhyun is petty while Zhou Mi is stubborn. Yet gradually, they develop trust, and Zhou Mi willingly opens himself to someone else for the first time since this whole “becoming a singer” business began.

Let’s not call it friendship, yet.

*

After years of independent living, Zhou Mi becomes accustomed to eating alone. At SM, the Chinese trainees have always been ignored, and ever since he adjusted to dorm living, he’s adapted his corner of the kitchen and shelf in the fridge to maintaining the bare minimum. Whenever he remembers to eat, he cooks for himself, eats by himself, and takes comfort in proper nutrition. Other times, he’ll snack throughout the day enough so that meals aren’t as much of a concern. In some ways, the solitude during meal times is a solace, giving him time to think and be at peace with just himself.

He would never admit that it’s kind of a lonely feeling, until Kyuhyun started to show up sporadically at his apartment, scrounging his cabinets for snacks, and bringing with him takeout if he can swing it. The amount of food he begins to eat still doesn’t match up to his energy consumption, but he’s feeling more energetic. Whether the liveliness is from Kyuhyun’s presence or the actual eating is still to be determined.

No matter how hard he tries to play it cool with living in a foreign country without people he knows well, Zhou Mi gains energy and happiness being around other people. He begins to feel the icy feeling of loneliness abate in his heart, little by little, as Kyuhyun makes a joke, or laughs and touches his shoulder. The warm sunshine is starting to creep back into him, and his smiles can reach his eyes again.

“Yours is really nice,” Kyuhyun says offhandedly once.

“My what?”

“Smile.”

(It’s so cheesy Kyuhyun has to duck and throw a nearby pillow at Zhou Mi’s head which disintegrates into an all out pillow fight that the other members of Super Junior join. In the end it’s Sungmin ferociously attacking Youngwoon, and the other members all have their eyes on the unsuspected pillow fighting champion but Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun will remember that they started it and more importantly, they will remember the conversation that preceded.)

At the dorms, they laze around together on sofas and beds, Zhou Mi tapping away at the keys on his phone and Kyuhyun’s fingers nimbly navigating video game maps using his laptop keyboard. They can spend hours not looking at each other but they’re in each other’s company and that’s enough. Subconsciously, they will gravitate towards each other as time progresses, a tangle of limbs, chins on shoulders, legs and arms wrapped around each other until it seems like they’ve been best friends longer than Kyuhyun’s known the other members of Super Junior.

On the streets, Zhou Mi will take Kyuhyun out shopping for new clothes to feel less embarrassed being around his sloppy presentation, and Kyuhyun will make faces at every article of clothing Zhou Mi recommends. In the end, he might buy a single novelty graphic tee and try not to look like an exasperated boyfriend when Zhou Mi frolics from store to store and amasses a frightening number of shopping bags.

“…I'm not carrying any of those for you,” Kyuhyun deadpans, eyes glued to his gameboy as he debates his next purchases in the pokémon game he’s engrossed with.

“Don’t worry! After all these years, I'm totally trained,” Zhou Mi responds. His tone is completely serious when he continues, “Siwon goes to the gym for weight lifting, but shopping is like my cardio and carrying all these bags back is almost as bad as doing several sets of deadlifts.”

Kyuhyun completely ignores him in favour of stocking up on his pokéballs and healing potions. He ignores him until Zhou Mi starts poking his triceps (no, not his arm flab) and Kyuhyun has to glare, hard, to stop Zhou Mi from giggling at him.

“You’re jiggling!”

“Yes, and if I poke you I feel like you’ll fall over.”

“Oh, Kuixian, I’m not making fun of you, I think you’re adorable.”

Kyuhyun closes his mouth a few times before settling on, “What did you call me?”

“What, adorable?”

“No, no, before that. Wait! That too! I’m not adorable. I’m Kyuhyun.”

“Yes, Kuixian, silly, of course I know who you are.”

“Kyu-hyun. Kyuhyun. Say it with me. Gyu-hyeon,” Kyuhyun enunciates slowly, while drawing the hangul in the air with his gameboy. The jigglypuff on the screen does not jiggle.

“Kyuhyun,” Zhou Mi says lightly, and Kyuhyun mumbles something before jabbing at the buttons with his nose in the air.

Moments later, Zhou Mi calls, “Come on, Kuixian, we better get back to the dorms and practice.”

Kyuhyun shakes his head sadly at his magikarp.

Before SM, Zhou Mi thought he had a pretty good idea about how working out felt. Heading to the gym and trying to keep fit was something that he started in university. He knew the feeling of bliss after a particularly rewarding cardio session, basking in your own body heat and feeling your muscles relax. But he was definitely not prepared for dance rehearsals, which left him feeling like he needed to wring sweat out of his tank top, and his legs so weak that he had to crawl to get to his belongings.

In the recording studios, Kyuhyun regularly passes him his water bottle, rolling his eyes if Zhou Mi has forgotten his own and has to drink from Kyuhyun’s. Zhou Mi looks at him gratefully, gulping down water and rubbing his throat before continuing his vocal training, which is largely interspersed with corrections on his Korean pronunciation. It’s a tiring process, one that leaves him wanting nothing but home, bed, and a mug of tea, but later, when Kyuhyun’s recording, Zhou Mi will sit outside, craning his neck to allow a few rich notes to drift into his ears.

“Were you waiting for me?” Kyuhyun will ask afterwards, and Zhou Mi will smile, trying not to betray the fact that he was just there to listen to Kyuhyun sing.

“Let’s go home,” Zhou Mi will say, continuing to smile.

There’s another mark now, where 曺圭贤 has been etched into his heart.

*

The whole SJM debut makes him feel like a four-year-old boy dipping his toe into a bathtub of ice water. Or at least, that’s how Zhou Mi thinks about it. It takes all of his courage not to grip the arms of the person beside him and cry about wanting out. The other Super Junior members don’t get it.

He braves the audience of their first TV appearance with shaky courage and internal trepidation. Henry, who’s being spoiled by Ryeowook, flashes him a grim smile of determination. He’s been here before and knows the power of fans. The Don’t Don era is something he’d sooner rather forget. Zhou Mi seeks out Han Geng, but thrust into the role of leader, he’s busy hammering out details and talking business with their manager. Zhou Mi takes a breath and counts to ten in Mandarin, then in Cantonese, and barely makes it past three in Wuhanese. Kyuhyun slips into the seat beside him when he gets to Korean and Zhou Mi wonders why he can count better in Korean than the dialect of his hometown.

This isn’t what he signed up for. He had no idea what he was signing up for, but it definitely wasn’t to feel like he had no space to breathe. He greets the audience, he stands in front of them, and for a ridiculous moment he feels completely naked before his eyes. He’s never felt so vulnerable, so under scrutiny, like his every word is a test and there’s no possible way for him to pass.

Regardless, he tries his best to impress them. He laughs, sings, dances his heart out, and avoids eye contact with all of the people in the audience. Somehow, he gets through. Somehow, when Kyuhyun rests his hand on Zhou Mi’s knee in the car heading back to the hotel, he’s still breathing.

*

On the plane ride back to Seoul, Kyuhyun wakes up with one earbud fallen out and his face pressed against the seat in front of him. He blinks his eyes and finds Zhou Mi neatly penning the characters for his given name and for the Me album, one after another over and over in a tiny notebook.

“Let’s pretend that nothing is impossible. There would still be no “me” in Super Junior,” Zhou Mi says.

Kyuhyun clicks his tongue and doesn’t sing, “世界不再只有单调的记号 (The world no longer only has signs of loneliness)”.

On his weibo, he won’t post the truth about how he feels. He’ll still get messages from people telling him he’s useless, that he should leave, don’t you have any shame, you’re dragging down Super Junior and nobody wants you in this group and— Zhou Mi’s learned to never look at the comments on his posts or his mentions.

There’s something excruciatingly ironic about fans using weibo to vote for SJM to win awards, and using weibo to turn against him. Although that’s not something he likes to think about.

Instead, he immerses himself in work. He composes and sings, he practices and spends any free time learning Korean, mouthing syllables and enunciating until the sounds become meaningless to his ears. Kyuhyun tells him he looks like he’s trying to drown himself and makes Zhou Mi eat with him. Kyuhyun has his own schedules but somehow still makes time to protect Zhou Mi from the rest of the world. It’s subtle, like he’s pretending not to care when he really does. Whenever Zhou Mi looks like he’s bored or resting, Kyuhyun keeps him busy so he doesn’t have time to think.

More nights than not, he finds himself wrapped up in blankets on Kyuhyun’s bed, back to the wall, facing Kyuhyun, who becomes his last line of defense. Like his shield. He feels cowardly, hiding behind Kyuhyun’s back all the way through to SJM’s comeback, but he doesn’t regret it.

*

Super Girl is a perfect pop song. It’s a fast beat with a strong bass and a mean hook. It’s everything popular music should be and the music video makes no sense but Zhou Mi laughs at all of Han Geng’s outfits and parties with Henry even though both of them think that this is the worst set up for a party either of them have ever seen. He has hope.

He doesn’t remember where or when he first started seeing signs for his name, but the Mi fanboards are more frequent during the Super Girl promotions and Kyuhyun teases him about having more fans. He catches himself wondering if there are more Mitang or Only13, but stops himself. Positive emotion trumps negative emotion, he tries to say. He tries to believe.

He mentions his question to Kyuhyun one night, when it’s nearly five in the morning and it makes more sense to stay awake than to nap for half an hour and wake up groggy for schedules. They’re sitting on the sofa and Kyuhyun is gaming and Zhou Mi is browsing through online clothing stores. He mentions it so nonchalantly than Kyuhyun almost gives his automatic grunt and they almost move on and it’s almost okay.

It’s mostly okay when, without thinking, Kyuhyun turns his head and presses his lips against Zhou Mi’s insistently, and it’s nothing like any of the kisses Zhou Mi’s ever had before. He blurts out something along the lines of, “Does this mean we’re dating now?” and Henry walks in and asks, “Wait weren’t you two already dating?” and it’s almost not okay but it is.

It’s not perfect; it’s okay.

They keep getting asked who their “super girl” could possibly be, as if their management could ever let them answer anything other than, “my mom”, or “my fans”. Zhou Mi wishes that they’d be asked for their super hero instead, just to shake things up. Just so he could say on air that Cho Kyuhyun was his superman, that he saved him from himself during the hardest years of his life. He wonders what the fangirls would think if they knew that “MiXian” was real.

In the end it doesn’t matter that Super Girl is perfect and that their variety show participation is well received. Absolutely none of it matters, because being perfect doesn’t make things okay.

It was Super Girl when things started to go wrong.

*

It was a Tuesday.

The first thought he has is, “ _Why didn’t Geng tell me himself?_ ” He had, to some degree, seen this coming. He knows the conversations they had weren’t just theoretical, knew where they were headed from the moment Han Geng brought them up.

_”Don’t you get frustrated with SM, sometimes, Mi?” Han Geng said, running a hand through his hair, “I mean, after all they’ve done to you, how do you keep smiling and bowing to them? Don’t you sometimes wish you could just leave?”_

It wasn’t unexpected, but Zhou Mi hadn’t thought it’d happen so quickly. And he definitely didn’t think he’d be receiving confirmation by reading a news article written by some person who had no clue what kind of person Han Geng was, who was painting a portrait to allow others still to believe they knew Han Geng. As if they could know more about Han Geng than Zhou Mi did, but reading that article, squinting at the tiny lines of Hangul he could only half understand, made Zhou Mi question if he knew Han Geng at all.

The next thing he thinks when he finishes the article is, “ _I need to find Siwon_ ”, which is followed by, “ _No, Heechul and Siwon have each other_ ”, and whatever the third thought was going to be, it’s lost because suddenly Kyuhyun is storming into his room and collapsing onto the bed before pressing his face into Zhou Mi’s lap. He snarls indecipherable comments into Zhou Mi’s thigh, gripping him tightly, and Zhou Mi has no clue how to respond.

It comes to his attention that Kyuhyun uses anger as a defense mechanism, that Kyuhyun genuinely cares about Super Junior, as a group and individually, that seeing someone unhappy pisses him off. It also becomes apparent that Kyuhyun did not see this coming, and feels personally betrayed as if this is an attack on Super Junior itself from within.

Zhou Mi remains calm though the mess, and quietly listens to Heechul’s heaving sobs over the internet before switching to sitting as Heechul vented his frustration after all of Super Junior-M’s activities are indefinitely halted. He says things soothingly, things like, “Separation is necessary as much as it is inevitable, this will only make people stronger”, and “It’s for the best, Geng didn’t make this choice easily”, and Heechul throws a pillow at him.

“Yah, don’t you think I know that? Have I been complaining?” He yells at him, and Zhou Mi is suddenly given the impression that they are all grownups. Siwon, too, is upset but composed. Most days, Zhou Mi sees him leave for church in the morning, and when he returns, he’s praying in his room. They all have their own ways of coping.

Kyuhyun’s is, perhaps, not so good. Contrary to popular belief, the post he makes confirms Zhou Mi’s theories about Kyuhyun not being so much angry as hurt. Furthermore, it’s not the backlash that gets Kyuhyun to take it down, nor a scolding from the company; Zhou Mi sits him down and calmly provides a dozen reasons why Han Geng left, and why his post was completely idiotic, not stopping through Kyuhyun’s loud and violent protestations. In the end, Kyuhyun looked like a kicked puppy and after he deletes the message, Zhou Mi gently pets him on the head.

The worst coping method, without a doubt, is Zhou Mi’s own. It’s a lack of coping mechanism. Funnily, he thought he deserved the right to be the most upset, losing the only other member of Chinese upbringing, one of his only true confidants with whom he had no communication barriers. Yet with everyone else’s reactions, he’s not given the opportunity to feel miserable. Strength is not an option, but a necessity.

It’s probably not advisable to want to feel shitty.

*

In all honesty, he’s not sure why he’s being blamed. One day, he wakes up to dozens of messages on his fan boards asking him if he feels proud of himself for “replacing” Han Geng. They tell him it’s his fault, that by existing, he’s caused too much controversy, that Han Geng is ten times the man he could ever be. He feels sick to his stomach. It’s worse than that. He feels like each word is a stab in the gut, like he’s being hammered to a wall of shame. It’s as if they think he hasn’t been subjected to the same, painfully restrictive exclusive contract that Han Geng was signed to. It’s like they think Han Geng was forced to leave, and that no one else feels burdened by SM.

He wants to ask them if they think the company supported him and Henry when they first started attacking them. He wonders if they don’t think that others have reason to press charges or file a lawsuit against SM. He wonders if they’ve already forgotten about DBSK.

Zhou Mi is shaking when Kyuhyun finds him. He’s forcibly removed from his chair, his laptop shut closed, and he’s dragged to the living room, where Kyuhyun sits him down and watches an entire season of a romcom. Kyuhyun rarely can sit through 5 minutes of one, but today he laughs in all the wrong places, and Zhou Mi doesn’t even use up a single tissue because he can hardly process a word of what’s going on.

When the drama ends and Zhou Mi still doesn’t react, Kyuhyun sighs, turns off the TV, and laces their fingers together. They sit silently for a long time.

*

Life is when you cannot go on but you want to. Or maybe, when you don’t want to live but you can.

He wants them to continue telling him what they think of him, because then, at least, they’re telling him that they _are_ thinking of him.

*

People say things get better. Things get worse.

*

SS2 Shanghai is like every fear and nightmare Zhou Mi has ever had playing out in reality. He flinches at all the shouting from the fans, and everything blurs together, from his tears, and from being overwhelmed. Usually, he remembers to smile and wave to anyone holding a Zhou Mi banner, and tries to make a personal connection with the few fans he does have. He can't even see what the banners say. Maybe he wouldn't want to.

It’s impossible to not feel anything when the majority of the audience look ready to kill him. So he looks away and doesn't let his eyes focus on anyone. He sings his heart out and reaches for all the high notes. It doesn’t matter if he sings several hundred pitches perfectly, because a single crack or anything out of place will automatically translate to him failing as a human being.

He feels boxed in, claustrophobic, as if everything around him is pulsating forward, closing in on him, ready to suffocate him. He feels like he’s going to puke, or stop breathing, or faint, or all three. It feels worse than dying, even though he has no clue how death feels like, but he knows that at least with death all these sensations would stop. It’d be better to feel absolutely nothing at all. His hands are clammy, and his grip on his microphone is deathly. He doesn’t register anything Heechul says to him, and Henry can’t meet his eyes.

The fans make him feel three years old, huddled in a corner, crying his eyes out. They don’t realize their own power. They don’t think, black ocean, what it really means for a performer to lose their audience, and their fanbase. It’s the fanwars between Cassiopeia and Sones all over again, it’s everything the music industry doesn’t need, it’s breaking Zhou Mi’s heart. He stands on stage, way higher than the audience, but feeling tiny, miniscule, less than insignificant.

To some degree, he understands them. He understands their hurt, their pain; he knows all of those feelings first hand. It’s akin to betrayal, but also frustration because no one can do anything about it, anger at SM, anger at himself, and the age-old feeling of separation. He knows it’s easier to blame someone that you can act against rather than a company you can’t change, a company that owns everyone else in the group you love, and he knows it’s better to find a scapegoat than it is to feel restless and angry at everything all the goddamn time. He knows, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

Henry’s eyes are closed and his voice is weak. It sounds even weaker than Zhou Mi’s legs feel.

When he opens his mouth, he’s completely unprepared for what happens.

He’s completely drowned out. He could be shouting profanity through his microphone and no one would hear any of it. His ears are filled with the sound of the stadium chanting Han Geng’s name, so loudly, so deafening, that he’s unsure if he’s ever heard sound to this volume. It doesn’t help that he didn’t have any confidence in the first place, but the result is that whatever he was supposed to sing is completely drowned out by the voices of their supposed everlasting friends, screaming as one unit for the return of Han Geng, someone who Zhou Mi still considers to be his friend.

And just as suddenly, the voices die away, so Siwon and Donghae and Ryeowook and Kyuhyun can be heard, but every time Henry or Zhou Mi open their throats up and try to pour their heart and soul into providing a performance for their fans…it doesn’t matter. They don’t care how hard they work. They’re here for Han Geng, and they’re here to make Zhou Mi and Henry feel shitty about being here too.

Zhou Mi briefly wonders if any SM artist has been booed off stage during their own performance, during a concert tour for their own fans. He wonders how obvious it would be if he started crying. He wonders if they’d cheer if he disappeared or died on stage right then and there. The cracks in his smile appear, and he can’t even use a grin as a defense mechanism, not in the face of this giant wave of pure spite. He wonders if he’s ever hated anything so vehemently as he’s being hated now.

They continue to perform. Wryly, Zhou Mi thinks this is what makes them professionals - that they persist when the world around them is collapsing. If the world were to end during one of their performances, if there was a fire, they would probably go right to the end, unless it were to save anyone attending their performance. But maybe it’s not that the professionalism that pushes them to proceed, but a loss for what to do. No one knows how to react. No one thinks that this could have been possible outside of a bad dream.

Kyuhyun is the only one who does something. He rips out his headpiece and drops his head to his chest, refusing to sing the last line of the song. The fans sing it for him, and Zhou Mi belatedly realizes that they don’t understand that Kyuhyun is shaking, shaking with anger, that the anger is against them, and that the more they cheer, the more he’s being riled up. Years down the road, they might look back and realize that they should have been crying, because everyone in SJM was close to tears.

They might not have Han Geng anymore, but Zhou Mi tries to telepathically tell Kyuhyun, “ _At least I still have you_.”

Everyone is incredibly subdued in the change rooms afterward. All of them are quiet. No one celebrates the performance. One by one, they return to the hotel. Zhou Mi asks the manager if he can stay a bit, and after the evening that's passed, he can’t refuse. When the last fan has left, Zhou Mi walks out onto the darkened stage, empty and terrifying, but completely calm. He sits on the edge, a shadow, and breathes in and out deeply just to check that he’s alive.

Zhou Mi bows his head to the sky, as he’s used to lowering his head to seniors that are actually younger than him, to fans, and hosts, to company officials and to strangers on the street. Respect is easy to fake, but Zhou Mi just wants to treat everyone the same way - well.

He doesn’t treat any of them differently. There aren’t any secret cakes to spoil Kyuhyun or an extra treat for Ni Qiu unless he’s bringing in takeout for the entire dorm and something for Heebum, Baengshin, Champagne, Hyaku, and Sen. If he ignores Ddangkkoma, it’s because Zhou Mi doesn’t realize Yesung’s turtle exists until he almost steps on him one day. From that day on, he’s just as sure to take cute pictures and post them on Weibo, and coo at him the exact same amount he coos at the other Super Junior pets.

This is how he’s been brought up.

It’s not that everyone is equal, per se, but that everyone deserves the same amount of respect. That everyone should have the opportunity to be cherished and loved and given support. This seems completely natural to him, something that all people should be aware of, and something that’s been written into his habits and behaviours rather than his conscious thoughts.

This is what makes it confusing.

Zhou Mi doesn’t know how anyone can purposefully leave out two members. He tries not to be sensitive about it, but he honestly does not get it. Shouldn’t all human beings be treated as human beings? Aren’t all people people? Isn’t everyone in Super Junior a member of Super Junior?

Uri neun Supa Juni-oyeo.

We are Super Junior.

Every time he holds out his outstretched hand for the cameras, it feels like a lie.

And he can still hear the screaming, that it’s entirely his fault, it’s all because of Zhou Mi. It doesn’t matter what he would try to say in response to that, they’d never let him speak. For the first time that night, he lets himself cry and hopes that Han Geng is doing well.

*

“You know what the saddest love songs are about?” Zhou Mi whispers, prodding Kyuhyun’s earphones with his index finger.

Kyuhyun shoves an earbud in Zhou Mi’s ear and turns up Chiyi Chin’s _Night Night Night Night_. “What?”

Zhou Mi gives a wry smile. “Unrequited love.”

Kyuhyun looks at him, affronted, “Um, hello? I love you?”

“I know,” Zhou Mi replies sadly, “But I also love Super Junior’s fans.”

“Those stupid assholes aren’t fans of Super Junior if they’re not fans of you! Besides, let’s count me as a Super Junior fan, I’m a fan of you, alright?”

“It’s not that,” he says.

“Well then what the fuck is it?”

“I have this never ending belief that anything is possible even though nothing has changed. Every time I’m on stage again, reality slams back into me.”

Kyuhyun feels like slamming Zhou Mi against the wall. He wants to punch him until he realizes that he’s wrong because Zhou Mi is the definition of achieving the impossible. He almost wishes that this were self-pity, because it would be simpler than trying to explain the irrational. He wants to slap him until Zhou Mi responds because Kyuhyun has so much bottled up anger on his behalf but Zhou Mi has become still and lifeless and an empty shell, and wouldn’t respond even if someone tried to kill him, even if it were Kyuhyun who was trying to kill him. Zhou Mi, who would jump in front of a car for Kuixian and who would take a bullet for one of his antis. Zhou Mi, who would save everyone in the world twice over but not himself. Zhou Mi who can’t raise a finger, who no one can get a raise out of because this kind of sadness is bone deep. And Kyuhyun doesn’t know the feeling.

In fact, Kyuhyun doesn’t believe that anyone could feel like this. How could the sun be raining? Kyuhyun doesn’t smile through his tears.

Instead, he looks up at the light hanging from the ceiling and lets it blind him, so he doesn’t have to see something he can’t fix. The situation has become too irreparable for him to even look at. It’s reached a point when only Zhou Mi can handle it, and Zhou Mi’s the one who is suffering.

Kyuhyun slams Zhou Mi against the wall.

He brings his hand to the back of Zhou Mi’s neck and feels Zhou Mi clench fistfuls of his shirt. He’s never been sensitive about height before, but when Kyuhyun pulls Zhou Mi down, it’s a little forceful, and a little needy. Their mouths press insistently against each other, and Zhou Mi lets out a whimper when he feels Kyuhyun’s tongue against the roof of his mouth. If he’s particularly clingy, they don’t talk about it. If it seems like he’s clutching to Kyuhyun for his life, they don’t talk about. They don’t talk about it but they feel the desperation, surrounding them and suffocating them.

Zhou Mi spends the night in Kyuhyun’s bed, in his arms, in his space, in his life, in his heart. It’s different from all the other times they’ve slept in the same bed, and yet mostly the same. Like something that’s always been there.

They don’t talk about love, but Zhou Mi can’t think of another word to describe what he’s feeling, and not sure he can accept how much Kyuhyun’s giving him for any other reason. (Besides, hearing “I love you” is a lot more hopeful than hearing, “I’d die without you.”)

*

Nothing Changes. Things worsen still. (But Kyuhyun will always be a Zhou Mi fan).

*

He doesn’t remember when it started. There were days when his voice felt scratchier than usual, when his throat seemed swollen. It was acting strange, but he thought it was nothing that several glasses of water couldn’t fix. But then the itchiness wouldn’t go away and he was constantly feeling sore and unable to sing and drinking more water and getting more worked up.

He doesn’t remember how it started, or when, or why, but he knows that he wasn’t expecting a death sentence. The doctor in Beijing suggests he might have throat cancer. But a singer without his vocal cords is dead. Zhou Mi vaguely remembers Kyuhyun telling the story about his father refusing to allow the doctors to damage his voice in any way. A singer without his vocal cords is dead. He remembers the words he had said, that Kyuhyun would rather die than live life unable to sing. A singer without his vocal cords is dead.

Zhou Mi is without his vocal cords.

He goes to four different hospitals, all of them give him the exact same death sentence, and he tells each of the doctors that they’re wrong.

His mother is perhaps more worried than he himself is. Zhou Mi is convinced that he can soldier on, but his mother sees a frail and thin boy trying to carry the world on his shoulders. She asks if he shouldn’t stop. Zhou Mi presses on. Chilhyun is perhaps even more anxious because he understands what it’s like to lose one’s living. Zhou Mi presses on.

He lives from IV drip to IV drip, getting used to the rhythm and routine of returning to the hospital. He takes medicine dutifully, and stops pushing himself carelessly. He takes performance classes and composes more music. He attends concerts and has a lot of time to reflect on how important singing is to him. Even not being able to sing in the shower is painful. He wonders if it’s retribution, if some kind of black magic from someone who was angry that he stayed on with SM while Han Geng left, rendering him unable to do the one thing he loves the most.

(Kyuhyun slaps his head with the sheet music they're suppose to be reading and Zhou Mi doesn’t voice his thoughts aloud on the subject).

Two months.

Two months is a long time when you have nothing to keep yourself busy with. Two months of sheer willpower and restraint, of never singing, but watching all his friends sing and perform and do what they too love most. It’s a painful and long 8 weeks. He immerses himself in hosting jobs, in whatever he can do that doesn’t force him to overwhelm his vocal cords and prays for their recovery. He tries not to get angry with himself but he can’t help it, not when he’s beyond frustrated. Probably, somewhere, there was an Only13 who was grateful for his sudden silence. Probably? Definitely.

It’s the first time he gets a good chance to reflect on his career. There are episodes of Korean Impressions that he watches, and notes with amusement that he can remain cheerful and happy and excited about the things he gets to experience and the people he meets. He is grateful. He’s been blessed with a positive nature, and he realizes that he is happy. He hasn’t been pulled down, and he’s more affected by the people who bring light to his life. A fan gift or a message from a Mitang makes him ten times happier than the hate mail can make him sad. It’s not strength of character so much as an inherently cheerful nature that saves him.

The support he receives from Mitangs, his mother, from the company, Liyin, Chilhyun, Song Qian, Henry, Heechul, _Kyuhyun_ , it makes everything okay. His life isn’t perfect; he’s okay. As long as they remain by his side, as long as they continue to support him, the rest of the entire world could be his anti-fans and he would still be able to carry on.

Kyuhyun’s right. Zhou Mi has Kyuhyun to love him, to be his fan. Zhou Mi is a part of Super Junior, and if someone can’t accept him, then they don’t truly love Super Junior after all. If Zhou Mi convinces himself to believe all this, he regains the positive attitude that once used to radiate from him.

It’s the thought of the positivity around him that propels him to trudge onwards, slowly warming his vocal cords back up, returning to singing. He is willing to take medication every day for the rest of his life to continue singing, even if his left vocal cord will no longer vibrate, even if his entire body is exhausted and screaming at him, he will beg for it to cooperate and allow him to sing just a little bit longer. He has hope that one day his vocal cords will be fully healed.

*

Losing hope is cowardly.

*

Zhou Mi is not cowardly.

*

(Although most days, Zhou Mi can’t think of a word to describe himself other than “coward”, hiding behind the hem of his mother’s skirt, and using Kyuhyun as his human shield.)

*

Things get better.

*

Right before the SS3 performance, Kyuhyun discovers a light on in one of the practice studios late at night. He’s about to return home after practicing his solo a final time. He finds Zhou Mi heaving against the mirrors. Kyuhyun immediately knows he’s been here for hours; it’s in the sweat that has soaked through all of Zhou Mi’s tank top, then kind of bone deep exhaustion in his movements, the scattered empty water bottles everywhere. Zhou Mi slides down the wall and melts into the floor, completely spent.

“How long have you been here?”

“Hours.”

He pulls Zhou Mi into a sitting position and grabs a towel to wipe off Zhou Mi’s face.

“I think I puked though, even though I don’t remember the last time I ate.”

Kyuhyun grimaces. “The janitors will take care of it, just be extra nice to them later. We’ll see if you’re up for some soup when we get back.” He slings one of Zhou Mi’s arms around his shoulder and half carries him back to the dorms.

In the end, Zhou Mi is too exhausted for anything resembling food, and heads to bed immediately after washing up. He finds himself under Kyuhyun’s blankets without thinking and they lie down, eyes closed, facing each other in the still of the night.

*

The entire Super Show 3 tour is considerably better than the SS2 tour for Zhou Mi. There is a significant decrease in number of fanlights and fanboards that are turned off, and ELF don’t chant Han Geng’s name whenever he sings. He gets to show Mitang his version of Miss Chic, the one he worked on with so much effort. There are still fans that walk out and use his solo as a bathroom break, but it’s okay. Things are okay.

After all, time does heal some wounds. He loses some. His weibo account is hacked, and he has to shut it down in fear of what nasty things the hacker can come up with to smear his name in dirt and make fans hate him more. SM doesn’t apply for visas for his performances and he doesn't attend with Super Junior. This is incredibly ironic - he has no problems performing in China, where the concentration of Only13 seems heaviest. Yet in the Philippines, where he has fans to support him, he isn’t able to perform.

In the end, all of this is negligible because his vocal cords cooperate and the number of death threats and hate messages he gets decreases and SJM finishes recording an album, and Zhou Mi isn’t bitter when no one complains that SM tries to use Hyukjae and Sungmin to fill in the gap that Han Geng has left. At least he can perform. At least SJM is back and he can sing, dance, and do his job.

They all have to make some sacrifices. Losing out members is tough enough, but they’ve lost Kibum and Han Geng permanently, so maybe Only13 are right – there are only 13 members left after all. Hyukjae ends up taking on a lot of roles to fill the gap that Leeteuk and Heechul inevitably leave behind. Sungmin, for his part, has really nice Mandarin pronunciation without trying. But with his young face, people forget that he’s getting older too, and eventually all of Super Junior will have done their two years in the army. Zhou Mi ends up instructing Chinese, practicing tones, going over pinyin rules, enunciating carefully and directly bringing Super Junior closer to their Chinese fanbase.

He loses some but he wins some.

They sing Perfection, and he feels offended at having to wear such horribly distasteful outfits. He remembers Henry’s strange fascination with the fur hats, constantly muttering things like, “this is nothing like what we have in Canada”, and Zhou Mi saves himself by grabbing a top hat and clinging to it for dear life. To this day, he’s unsure what exactly the concept for the album was.

SJM changes a little, musically. There’s the loss of a native speaker, and the addition of a rapper and their sound becomes a little more Korean pop than it is Mando pop. The fans eat it up anyway. The avidness and worst of the Only13 seems to taper off, and he thinks about writing a book on fashion. He composes music and pens lyrics. He sticks to Kyuhyun like glue and watches everything Kyuhyun’s involved in, from radio shows to variety shows to musicals. Or maybe, it’s his perspective that’s skewed in Taiwan. Taiwan is a lot of support from a lot of fans, and no talk of Only13. It’s more translating work on variety shows on behalf of the rest of his group, but also walking in the night market and feeling confident and happy. There are ELF who are unhappy but they may always remain that way. Han Geng still won’t come back and that’s no fault of Zhou Mi’s, and there's nothing he can do for it.

For some reason it feels like they promote Perfection for years, and in a way they do. After 2011, 2012 is a lot of preparation for the next album, so the Perfection cycle doesn’t really end. They perform the song as a group in concerts and they win some awards. The span of time between Super Girl and Perfection was long enough; Zhou Mi has the patience to wait for the next album.

He gets a role in a Chinese drama with two of his best friends. His voice continues to cooperate with him and he gets more supportive messages than hateful ones. Henry and Zhou Mi get invited to official SM events.

Yes, things get better.

Break Down seems like a return to Super Girl, and Zhou Mi even gets a solo on the album. Kyuhyun demands a Weibo account, and soon everyone in SJM has one. Heechul still treats him as a slave, and he ends up posting all the pictures Heechul takes since he can’t read a word of Chinese. SM allows for a question on Han Geng to be aired, and they speak of him fondly. Zhou Mi expresses their desire to meet and perform together again. It’s surreal. Less than two years prior, the mention of Han Geng would have fangirls in an uproar, chanting his name and wishing for Zhou Mi’s downfall. Now, they cheer at the fact that he wants them to perform together again.

*

It doesn’t really hit him until after the Break Down promotions are over. That they performed on all the major Korean promotional shows even though they’re a group aimed at a Chinese market. That he won a solo award. That he released a book. It all seems so impossible contrasted to the life of his past.

He’s sitting one day, working on something for Chilhyun when he gets informed of a schedule to be present at the Super Junior Google+ Hangout and he almost has a heart attack. There’s being invited to an SM art exhibition for the entire company, and then there’s actually being viewed as a member of Super Junior.

He wants to cry at how heartwarming everyone’s comments are.

“Truthfully, you work even harder than us, right?”

“Why should you and Henry not be allowed to stand on stage with us?”

“You are part of Super Junior.”

And he’s willing to throw all of his time and effort into Super Show 5 because they care. It doesn’t matter that there is backlash. It doesn’t matter because the backlash is considered strange instead of normal. It doesn’t matter because he’s no longer the losing minority. You can never please everyone, but if you can get a handful of supporters, then you have succeeded.

This is an idol’s version of normalcy, and Zhou Mi takes it gladly, with open arms.

*

He quotes it to Kyuhyun on the way to the hotel.

“I got a message, the other day.”

Kyuhyun reads it aloud, “There is a moment when people finally realize. I have always believed in my own truths and lies, but that failure is not yours. I now support Super Junior as 15.” He scoffs loudly. “What a pile of crap, it doesn’t even rhyme.”

“Kuixian!” Zhou Mi exclaims and snatches his phone bag.

Kyuhyun sees Zhou Mi clutch the message to his chest, clinging to it like a lifeline. Kyuhyun sees a glimmer of hope.

*

The problem is that no matter how compassionate he tries to be, they still hate him.

Hate is a feeling; Zhou Mi knows this. Hate is not always a feeling that can be controlled. Hate is a strong word, and Zhou Mi is hard pressed to think of anything he well and truly hates. Rude people are irritating. The climate in China is uncomfortable. Spiders make him nervous. He could say he hates any of these things, but not one is something he truly hates. Hatred is irrational and emotional in the most mean-spirited of ways. Dislike is okay. Dislike is logical and can be doctored. Dislike is something that can be changed, that can be debated, that makes sense. Hate is none of those things. Hate scares him. Hate makes him want to run away. He can't change hate but that's not the only thing he faces now. He’s spent so much of his life running away that when he’s finally forced to face the world, he doesn’t know how to stand still and confront what’s before him.

What’s presented before him is life. Life is beautiful and precious and you have to treat it that way or else no will understand or appreciate it. So it begins now, with a quiet realization that it’s something to be cherished.

*

If he had been told five years ago that he’d play a major role in a fifth Super Show tour, he would have laughed out loud. If he had been told that he’d be performing on the major Korean music shows, he would have accused you of lying. If you had said that he was going to get his weibo back, well, then he would have just thought you were having a go at him.

Ages ago, a trainee had asked him, “The future’s bright, isn’t it?” and Zhou Mi hadn’t been able to answer. But he does think that it’s true now. It’s little things that show improvement. Kyuhyun thinks those things should have been granted in the first place, but this is because he was singing U on SBS from debut. Kyuhyun’s always been allowed to take the little things for granted and it’s not fault of his but Zhou Mi knows what it’s like to not have the little things. And so he appreciates them all the more.

What Kyuhyun doesn’t want to understand is compassion. He will never understand why Zhou Mi forces himself to read through hate mail and smile through jeering and accept slander without fighting back. But Zhou Mi knows this:

A story is never complete unless it has more than one side. And the more complex the knot is, the more perspectives you must have. This is life. This is living.

This is what Zhou Mi’s life has been filled with: loss. This is what he has gained: the drive to live.

Zhou Mi stands on stage and life stretches in front of him; the world is waiting for him to hold it in his hand.

He takes Kyuhyun’s hand, and the music begins.


End file.
